Forget category. Any storm can land a knockout punch: Jarvis DeBerry

In the March 1971 contest billed as the "Fight of the Century," Joe Frazier knocked down the previously undefeated Muhammad Ali in the 15th round and later had his arm raised as the victor. Two years later, George Foreman knocked down Frazier six times in two rounds, at which point the referee called the fight. No wonder so few...

In the March 1971 contest billed as the "Fight of the Century," Joe Frazier knocked down the previously undefeated Muhammad Ali in the 15th round and later had his arm raised as the victor. Two years later, George Foreman knocked down Frazier six times in two rounds, at which point the referee called the fight.

David Grunfeld, The Times-PicayuneThe small community of Ironton was inundated with water from Hurricane Isaac in Plaquemines Parish and was still underwater Thursday, August 30.

No wonder so few people gave Ali a chance against Foreman. If Foreman humiliated the man who had defeated Ali, wouldn't it be safe to assume that Foreman would destroy Ali even more thoroughly? Maybe. Except Foreman didn't destroy the challenger. For eight rounds, Ali absorbed Foreman's power like nobody thought he could. Then he dispatched the previously undefeated Foreman with several blows to the head.

It is the habit of South Louisianians to base evacuation decisions on how they survived the previous hurricane. On its face it seems perfectly logical to assess one's chances based on what one's already experienced. But the damage a storm will leave is not easily predictable.

Many who stuck around for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were confident they'd survive because they'd already gone through Betsy 40 years before, and nothing, in their minds, could pack a stronger punch than Betsy.

Ditto Isaac. A Category 1 storm at its strongest, many South Louisianians were confident the storm wouldn't be bad because they'd been through Katrina, which at its strongest was a Category 5.

Yet, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said last week, "The devastation of my house is worse than Katrina, and the flooding in Woodlawn is worse than Katrina, so those things tell me that the damage on the east bank is worse than Katrina."

Of course, if you take a more expansive look at the metropolitan area, there's no comparison: Katrina was far more destructive and far more deadly than Isaac. In Louisiana and Mississippi, Isaac's combined death toll was in the single digits. More than two dozen were killed as the storm moved through the Caribbean. Katrina -- mostly because of a porous system of levees -- killed more than 1,000 people in Louisiana alone.

The metropolitan area made out better in Isaac than Katrina, but clearly that doesn't mean that everybody within the area did. Some people flooded horribly this time, despite going relatively unscathed seven years ago. They're left wondering what just happened.

The overemphasis on the Saffir-Simpson scale has obviously given some homeowners a false sense of security, made them believe that a tropical storm is always better than a Category 1, a Category 1 is always better than a Category 2 and so on and so on.

Styles make fights, they say, and in similar fashion, styles make storms. From which direction is the storm coming? Exactly where does it land, and which quadrant hits us? How much surge does it bring with it? How long does it stay?

Katrina didn't made a direct hit on New Orleans early Aug. 29, 2005, but we still got its winds, winds that moved through our area quickly. It remained windy that afternoon, but not dangerously so. The storm brought remarkably little rain.

Isaac dawdled. According to a 2 a.m. advisory released by the National Hurricane Center on Aug. 29, that storm, packing winds of 80 mph, had all but stopped moving. That lack of movement meant there was more time for rain to fall. And fall it did. By that Thursday night, Aug. 30, more than 20 inches had fallen on New Orleans.

Large amounts fell on other nearby communities, too, but they don't have the pumping system that New Orleans has. So a Category 1 storm with a lot of rain can be calamitous for them.

It's worth noting that after his 1971 loss, Ali fought Joe Frazier two more times: a rematch before he fought George Foreman and a rubber match after. When the fighters last met, in September 1975, Frazier was considered washed up, a shell of his former self. He wasn't expected to give Ali much trouble. After all, hadn't Ali knocked out the man who had pummelled Frazier to a pulp?

Ali prevailed, but barely. He collapsed as soon as the fight was over and had to be helped to his feet. Frazier, marveling at his opponent's toughness, said, "Man, I hit him with punches that'd bring down the walls of a city."

And Ali, who had let his past successes and talk of Frazier's decline cloud his memory of Frazier's left hook, said, "It was like death. Closest thing to dyin' that I know of."